Enermax LIQMAX II 240 Liquid CPU AIO CPU Cooler

Enermax is extremely proud of its Liqmax II 240 CPU AIO cooler. It is one of the few coolers you will find that it proudly displays its TDP rating right on the front of the box, which happens to be "350W+." With its Batwing fan blades, ceramic bearing pump, and Shunt-Channel-Technology it is a sure winner, right? Let's find out.

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Conclusions

Enermax has come a long way from when we first reviewed their AIOs. Quality seems to have improved as well as performance. AIOs such as this are always interesting because of their flexibility. Using only what comes in the package, you get good performance and the option of running silent, having maximum performance with a lot of noise, or something in the middle. The real flexibility comes when you add two more fans. You can improve the cooling or reduce the noise and maintain the same level of cooling. But we’re not reviewing hypotheticals.

The unit’s stock performance is OK which doesn’t bother me since it would be awfully out of character to use a unit like this with a stock CPU. But if that’s how you roll so be it. Overclocking performance or the real reason to buy the LIQMAX II 240 is improved but mostly with the fans at their fastest. You can run the kit at low speed and still receive a big boost over running the stock cooler but you will be leaving a lot of performance on the table. Lastly, the fans with their unique blades seem to perform their duties well but make a lot of noise at full tilt.

Now that we have a clear picture of the performance we have to answer the big question, what will all this cost me?

Price/Performance

The charts below show the cost you will pay for each degree in temperature reduction the heat sink gives you over the stock cooler. The two areas that influence this chart are cost of the heat sink and its performance. An expensive cooler that gives you superior performance will be rated as average since its cost hurts its rating. Inversely, a poor performing heat sink that costs next to nothing will be rated as average since its performance will hurt its ratings. We ideally look for low cost and high performance. All prices were gathered by doing a very quick search of the web for each cooler and listing it here sans S/H and tax (these can vary widely from region to region). We use MSRP pricing for those not yet found in stock.

As an example, if a cooler outperforms the stock cooler by 10C and costs USD $5.00 it would be listed in our chart as $.50. You would pay fifty cents for each degree of better performance over the box cooler.

To arrive at a single number difference, we took the value of all four cores from our overclocked tests, averaged these and then compare these for analysis.

The Bottom Line

At $80 the Enermax LIQMAX II 240 makes a very compelling argument. The performance isn’t the best but when you consider what this AIO costs it’s a lot easier to accept. Factor in the capability to add more fans and for $80 you get a lot of cooler. Between compatibility, cost and performance the LIQMAX II could be the perfect cooler for users of older systems looking to save some money and have a setup that can stay with them while they upgrade.